


A Dog's Scent

by latejuly358



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Eventual Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21680599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/latejuly358/pseuds/latejuly358
Summary: After catching Inuyasha giving him a weird look and smelling something unfamiliar, Koga realizes that his true love may not be Kagome after all. But what will Kagome have to say about that? More importantly, what will Inuyasha?
Relationships: InuYasha/Kouga (InuYasha)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

Koga frowned as Kagome embraced Inuyasha. Why did she always fall into his arms? Koga’s arms were just as strong. The way she smiled at Inuyasha, the way he returned them with a frown: certainly she deserved better. Koga’s thoughts turned to Inuyasha. Koga looked up from Kagome’s feet to glare at Inuyasha, only to find the stupid mutt staring right at him with a quizzical expression on his face. What did that mean? Koga turned away, piqued at what was already a gloomy day. As Koga walked away from the group, he heard Kagome’s tearful reprimands: “Inuyasha, don’t think of scaring me like that again! You shouldn’t push yourself so hard!”

Koga turned back to see Inuyasha’s reaction, but the dog demon was still looking at him. Inuyasha noticed Koga’s confusion and immediately comforted Kagome: “C’mon, you know I can handle things tougher than that ghost: I’m a half-demon.” Inuyasha looked up once more to jerk his head away from Koga’s glare. What was wrong with that mutt?

* * *

Koga sauntered to the riverside to relax. He was disappointed once again at Kagome’s lack of appreciation. He had done his best to impress her, so why was she always running to that dog? He threw a rock at the water, disturbing some trout, and laid back in the grass. The clouds had parted, and a slight breeze ran over the land, carrying some of the water’s coolness over Koga’s tanned body which had just endured a tense battle. Koga’s mind wandered back to his childhood when he father admonished him to find a good wife: “Remember son, you must get an obedient wife, one who will be there to help you whenever you come back from a raiding party or a hunt.”

Back then, Koga had never doubted anything coming from that scarred, smiling face, gnarled like an old tree that had been the site of ax-throwing practice, but now Koga struggled with such advice. He had wanted to make Kagome his wife for the longest time. Every time they met, Koga was sure that that was the time when Kagome would recognize her affections for him. She would separate from Inuyasha’s group, quit the search for Naraku, and hand all the sacred jewel shards she had collected over to him, Koga, so that he may finally avenge his fallen tribe. And once that was over, Koga would return home to Kagome and raise a family with her. Instead of being the stay at home wife Koga’s father insisted on, Kagome would fulfill roles that she wanted, Koga decided. He had seen her prowess with a bow. Koga knew that if they were to have children, he could count on her to protect them when he went out to hunt or discuss business with the other wolf tribes. Imagining falling asleep with Kagome, with her carefully sheltered in his arms, Koga felt the approach of sleep. It was a sweet thought that he wished to hang onto for a few moments more, fleeting though it was. He readjusted himself and settled into a comfortable position. He closed his eyes and fell asleep thinking of how best to comfort Kagome.

  
Not too long into Koga’s sleep though, he twitched his legs: something cold had washed over them, but he couldn’t fully register what it was. He felt a few more pin drops of cold. He opened his eyes to see a dripping Inuyasha. The dog demon occupied himself with shaking the water off himself, some drops of which landed on Koga.

“Can’t you do that somewhere else?” he demanded.

“Quit your yapping. You’re up already,” Inuyasha snapped back.

Koga decided to leave once he woke up his legs, heavy with sleep. “What were you doing?”

“Trying to catch some fish. Can’t I do that?”

“Apparently not.”

Inuyasha threw a dirty look at Koga then returned to drying himself.

“If you’re trying to catch fish,” Koga began, “do it like this.” He picked up a nearby branch, broke off the end so that a sharp tip remained, and, after scanning the water, threw the branch in. He waded into the river and retrieved the makeshift spear to reveal a flapping fish at the end. “See—not too complicated.” Inuyasha said nothing. Koga threw the fish at him, saying, “Give that to Kagome: she must be tired after what happened today.” Inuyasha muttered thanks and was about to leave before Koga called out to him: “What were you looking at earlier?”  
Inuyasha stopped. “What?”

“Don’t be dumb. You were looking at me earlier today when you had Kagome in your arms.”

“I wasn’t looking at nuthin’.”

“Yes you were. What was it?”

“Nothing. It’s just that you smelled weird.”

Koga didn’t believe this, but he nevertheless took Inuyasha’s comment to heart. Ever since he had been trying to woo Kagome, Koga paid much more attention to his hygiene than ever before. He even bathed himself once or twice a week. Even after a battle, he was conscious of his smell whenever he approached Kagome, afraid that his odor might drive her away.

“Whatever, dogface. Just go bring that to Kagome.”

The dog demon walked off into the forest. Not tired enough to go back to sleep and not ready yet to join his comrades, Koga picked up the stick he had thrown and swished it around in the water. Now that he thought of it, during his entire conversation with Inuyasha, Koga also noticed a scent that he found pleasurable. It wasn’t Kagome’s, but Koga didn’t want to recognize the other possibility. Koga snorted and tossed the stick into the stream. A few fish scattered. The stick lazily swam downstream.

* * *

Inuyasha returned to the campsite that his group had set up on the outskirts of a village, his clothes still damp from his plunge in the river. They would have been able to spend the night at a comfortable inn thanks to Miroku’s “exorcisms,” but since Kagome insisted on having Koga stay with them for the time being (and since the villagers would be scared out of their wits on seeing the obvious demon that Koga was), they had to sleep in a clearing in the forest. _And I could have had a proper dinner_ , Inuyasha thought as the final tremors of the fish Koga had earlier caught lessenned in strength and then died out entirely. 

“Did you catch that yourself?” a child’s voice rang out.

Inuyasha shook himself out of his thoughts and saw Shippo atop Kirara, the former’s face showcasing a cherubic smile.

“No,” Inuyasha responded, “it was that fleabag Koga.”

“Well, how nice of Koga to catch food for us,” Kagome chimed. “Did you thank him at least?”

Inuyasha scowled at the arrogant attitude Koga had displayed at the riverbank. How come Inuyasha should say “Thank you” to Koga for a measly fish when _he_ had saved her life time after time. In fact, Inuyasha didn’t remember Kagome thanking him for saving her from that ghost. 

“Inuyasha--”

“All right, I’ll do it when he gets back.” Inuyasha brushed past Kagome and laid the fish beside Sango. Although he knew how to prepare the fish, Inuyasha was in no mood to do so.

Kagome walked up to him. “Your clothes are damp. You won’t get sick?”

“I’m not as weak as you humans.”

“Still, it’ll start smelling if you don’t dry it properly.”

“I can just--” Inuyasha began, but Kagome cut him off and motioned for him to go change. She had already taken out a fresh change of clothes from her bag for him. He began to take his outer robe off before Kagome screamed at him, “Not in front of me, you perv! Go out into the forest!” She threw the clothes into his face. A few choice words later and Inuyasha was on his way into the forest.

“Inuyasha seems pretty irritated today,” Kagome said to herself.

“Isn’t that how he always is?” Shippo picked a stick up from the ground to poke at the obviously dead fish.

Sango shooed Shippo away, telling him to go play with Kirara at the other end of the grove. 

Sango said, “I’m sure that once he puts something in his stomach Inuyasha will feel better.” She placed the fish in a basket. “I’ll go to collect some herbs. Maybe we can have some soup?” she suggested. She rubbed Kagome’s shoulders and walked off into the forest.

Kagome appreciated Sango’s words, but still felt uneasy. She did sense some tension earlier between Inuyasha and Koga, but wasn’t that how they always interacted with each other? She felt that today was different than before though.

Koga by this time had returned from the river with several more fish skewered on a branch. He thought that he could gain Kagome’s good graces if he provided food not only for her but for her companions as well. 

“Hey Kagome,” he called from the other side of the grove. “Got something for ya.”

Kagome blushed for thankfulness. Although she continually declined the wolf’s offers of marriage, she was still grateful for his regard for her, and for the times that he came to help her and her friends when Inuyasha couldn’t. While she couldn’t imagine a future relationship with him let alone marriage, she still admired his confident stride, the well-developed muscles that surrounded his frame, and his selflessness, at least when it concerned her.

“You didn’t have to,” she started.

“Nonsense, I know you and your friends are hungry.”

Koga plunged the stick into the ground and gathered more sticks. He also stuck these into the ground to form X’s at opposite ends of the fire so that, once the branch with fish was placed within the nooks, this makeshift rotisserie would cook dinner for the entire party. 

Koga said, “You know, Kagome, the wolf lands have rivers with much prettier fish than these.”

Seeing right through his attempt, Kagome would have none of it: “Yes, but I’ve had so much fish since leaving my home, it’s too oily, it’s not good for me at all.”

“There’s bear meat, too.”

“I want something with vegetables.”

Koga was hardly acquainted with vegetables, only knowing that they were plants humans could eat. Beyond that he was clueless, unable to distinguish between cabbage and turnips. However, he did peek over Kagome’s shoulder one time while she was perusing a magazine. A bowl filled with green leaves and orange tubes occupied the entire page. While he couldn’t read, Kagome said to Sango “It’s a salad” and went on about how much she missed eating them.

“You mean like this?” Koga grabbed some of the grass and handed it to Kagome. He had seen some cows eating this before. “Salad, right?”

Kagome laughed out loud. “No, Koga.” She turned the skewered fish; their skin sizzled against the insistent tongue of the flames. Maybe fish from Koga’s land wasn’t so bad an idea?

As Kagome turned the fish over the campfire, Koga stole a few glances at Kagome. Admittedly, the green pleats of her emerald skirt and the delicate red bow tied around her neck suited her well, but Koga awaited the day when she would finally abandon her schoolgirl uniform and adopt the apparel common to all wolf demons--fur. 

“But Koga, do you think that maybe…” She didn’t want to insult him, especially after all the work he had just done, but the wet fur of his armor was starting to compete with the aroma of the fish. Koga understood immediately.

“Sorry, Kagome.” Despite his best efforts, he at times forgot to bathe. Kagome pulled out another of Inuyasha’s spare robes.

“No, no, no, I’m not gonna wear any of muttface’s clothes,” Koga protested.

“I washed it just the day before, it’s completely fine. Inuyasha won’t mind,” knowing completely well that Inuyasha would mind. “It’s just for the night, anyhow.”

Still Koga would not give in, but after a few of Kagome’s pouts, Koga reluctantly stretched his hands out to receive the clothes.

“And please go out to the forest to change.”

“All right.” With that, Koga, eager to please Kagome, headed out to the forest.


	2. Chapter 2

Koga picked his way through the forest, minding the stray twigs and ant trails that met his path. A spark flickered in the corner of his vision: a single iridescent slug crawled up a tree trunk. Its slime trail reflected the fading sunlight so that Koga thought, for a brief moment, that a trail of slugs followed the first. His father had imparted an appreciation of nature to him, not only for its most magnificent aspects like the rushing waterfalls and the quivering sky right before a lightning storm, but also for its smallest creatures，like the slug that he had just spotted in this massive forest. Out of all the advice that Koga’s father had tried to impart to his son, this was the one that Koga needed no extra help in accepting. However, it was time to put the more important advice, the one concerning a future wife, into action. Just what future would he have with Kagome?

Thinking of it, Koga had always assumed the Kagome would say yes in the end to his marriage proposal. (His first proposal, if it could be called that, ended rather roughly for him, with a slap to his cheek.) He had hitherto been successful with women until meeting Kagome: her refusal had been a shock to him.  _ Damn it, _ he cursed himself,  _ did that ruin everything? _ Indeed, one’s first impressions invariably leave a lasting trace, and even if Kagome had warmed up to him somewhat after their first encounter (she did save him as many times as he saved her, after all), he feared that his boorishness would repel her. His attempts to civilize himself through bathing, combing his hair, and acting nicer towards her companions would ultimately prove futile. How  _ could _ she still prefer Inuyasha to him? It pained him to think that maybe, in the end, all his thoughts of wooing her, marrying her, would come to nothing, that he would never hear the words he desired her to speak so much: I love you. _ What if... _ but he dared not finish the thought in his head. The thing he would probably miss the most about her, if she ended up scorning his company, would be her scent. He admired the fact that she had not perfumed herself with various fruits and spices as the wolves did back at home to make him fall in love with them. If this delicious smell were to suddenly disappear out of his life, he would grow lonely. But what was that? Another scent drifted into his nostrils. Familiar, but hated--Inuyasha. He looked down to see that the robes he was carrying had unfurled during his walk, their scent free to permeate the air.

Reminding him of a dog who hadn’t had a bath for months, Koga immediately snorted. As much as Koga hated the mutt, Kagome clearly cared for him. The question came up once again: How could she like him so much? As rude and seemingly uncaring Inuyasha was, whenever it came to Kagome, whether she was caught the flu or was in a demon’s hands, or simply had to return to her own time, he rushed to help her. Kagome couldn’t be blamed for taking a liking to Inuyasha after all their struggles. 

Koga sniffed at the air again.  _ Just what did Inuysha mean when he said that I smelled weird? _ Koga lifted his arm and inhaled: no perceivable difference from before, but then again, one is always used to one’s scent. Inuyasha wouldn’t give a definite answer either. Koga would just have to put it out of his mind. But Inuyasha… what was it that I smelled earlier? It wasn’t Kagome’s scent: it was too masculine, assertive for Kagome. Miroku and Sango never produced such a smell, and they weren’t nearby at any rate. Forget about Shippou. But it was also dissimilar to any of the mutt’s previous smells.

Koga deemed this spot to be far away enough. He undid his hair, lifted his armor off, and unfolded Inuyasha’s robes. The last rays of the sun filtered through the treetops, dotting Koga like a leopard. Although Kagome had assured him that the robes were clean, Inuyasha’s scent clung to them. That scent, faint in the clothes, was getting stronger somehow.

“What do you think you’re doing with those?”

Koga was jolted out of his thoughts. He had been so engrossed in them that he hadn’t noticed the incoming sound of feet on the forest floor.

“Did you hear me, wolf?” Inuyasha’s ears twitched. He was out of his regular red robe and had only the white under robe on. His golden eyes glared into Koga’s sapphire ones as he waited for an answer.

Koga’s first instinct was to bare his teeth, but recognizing that this was an ally, he restrained himself.

“These?” Koga pointed at the robes. “Kagome wanted me to put them on.” An idea came into his head. “I guess she didn’t want you catching her looking at this.” Koga turned his body so that it Inuyasha could get a full view of his torso. Inuyasha turned away, his face filled with disgust; but Koga thought that something else flickered in Inuyasha’s expression: curiosity.

“My fur was wet and it was disturbing Kagome, so she gave me your robe.” Koga said.

“Okay, fine, just don’t make it smell like mangy wolf. In fact, you can keep it.” 

Inuyasha wasn’t so boisterous this time. As much as Koga despised Inuyasha, he had grown fond of trading insults with him. Whenever they met, usually by Kagome’s side, they got into it furiously. He would at times almost forget that what they were arguing over, Kagome, even existed. 

“I don’t know about that. I want to throw it away because it’s yours, but then I want to keep it because Kagome gave it to me. Hmm...No, it reeks too much of you. I think I’ll throw it away.” Koga peered at Inuyasha to see his reaction, but the latter was still averting his gaze, as if contemplating something. “Whatever,” Koga said to himself. He began putting his arms through the sleeves. At the last tuck Koga gave to the robe, he unleashed a puff of Inuyasha’s scent; it enveloped him. What was this? Koga asked himself. His sensitive nose overwhelmed by the hard-to-place aroma that filled his nostrils. It reminded him of something but of what?

“--gonna leave.”

“What was that?”

“I said, after this night we’re gonna leave first thing tomorrow. We still have a lot of the jewel shards left to collect,” Inuyasha said. Koga waited for Inuyasha to say something more, but Inuyasha remained silent, passive as stone.

“And?”

“And you’re going to go back to your wolf lands.”

“What?!” Koga flung his hands up. He had nothing to grab onto, so he directed them towards the robe. What parts of it fell into his hands he wrung. “Since when did you make decisions about what I did?”

“It’s not for you--”

“Then who is it for?” 

“It’s for Kagome.”

“What?”

Inuyasha maintained his stoic face. “It’s for her that I’m telling you to go back. Can’t you tell that she doesn’t like it when you come around?”

Pride flared up in Koga’s breast. “Yeah, because it reminds her of how inferior you are.”

“Don’t you get it, you stupid fleabag?” Inuyasha’s voice was rising. “She never liked you that way, but she’s too polite to turn you down. She feels too obligated to you for all the stuff you’re doing, but she’s never going to marry you. Get it through your head already.” 

Koga’s heart was pounding furiously. Even if Kagome wasn’t going to marry him, why couldn’t she tell him herself? He would have accepted it with grace. Koga wanted to respond with anything.  _ How dare this half-demon intervene. _ He shut his mouth at something tickling the back of his throat. It was his desire to agree, to confirm the obvious truth he was unable to admit to himself: he had expended so much time and effort on trying to woo a girl who had never entertained the pure fantasy of becoming his wife. Koga saw the long expanse of the future shut off in front of him. All he could see now was a hostile dog demon.

“Oh, so you think that she’s gonna end up with you?” Koga advanced towards Inuyasha. He wanted to strike out at his cruel fate whose representative was Inuyasha.

“Why should that matter to you? All you need to know is that it’s not you she’s gonna be with.” Inuyasha’s eyebrows had creased and he stared straight into Koga’s eyes, but he broke off eye contact and looked at the ground. 

Why should her fate involve you and not me? You and I aren’t so different: we’re both here, searching for the jewel shards, and both in love with a beautiful woman, so what is it that separates you from me?

At Koga’s first step though, an exquisite smell invaded his nostrils. And then it appeared. He was crouched among the bushes, looking through them at the gaily appareled figures walking up and down the sidewalk parallel to the river, their watery doubles walking in tandem. Lanterns hung up in restaurant fronts twinkled warmly. A cry rings out. “Hey, kid, what are you doing there?” Two men, their robes disheveled, one bald and the other fat, shuffle out from behind a tree. A bitter smell hangs over them. The bald one takes a look at me. “Hey, kid, what are you doing out here when you should be at the festival?” What are they talking about? The bald one turns towards his friend and confers with him, both of their faces upturned into grins. The fat one looks and spots my tail. “It’s a demon child!” he shouts out. The two men take uncoordinated steps toward me, tumbling over some protruding tree roots, but I speed off. I look over my shoulder to see if I lost them. I tumble out of the bushes and spy--

“What’s going on here?” Sango was standing by Inuyasha’s side with various spices in hand and a basket resting against her hip. The sweet smell had seeped into the surrounding area, drenching it, but had taken on another tone. Koga felt somehow  _ safer _ in this part of the woods. Ease washed over Koga. “It was--” he began.

“Nothin’.” Inuyasha glared at Sango but softened his expression on seeing the concern in her face. Sango looked like she was going to ask Koga something but then decided against it.

_ I wish I could remember what it is _ , Koga said to himself. But like a dream, Koga’s attempts to remember only drove the desired object further away. Sango beckoned Inuyasha. He gave Koga one final glare and turned towards Sango.

The wolf prince gazed as Inuyasha left him alone in the clearing. He could not take his eyes away from the silver trail forming behind Inuyasha as the wind filled in the wake he left. It added a touch of elegance to his usual brutal demeanor. How would it look in the full resplendence of sunlight? During their argument over Kagome, his heart had been pouding quicker and quicker until he could feel it in his head, feel the reverberations to his fingertips. His heart took on a different pulse now, but not filled with despair over his and Kagome’s canceled future nor with Inuyasha for telling him something he knew all along, but with the same feeling that he had often got on looking at Kagome when her hair similarly trailed behind her in the wind. The pulse had now reached his toes: whenever he shifted, his toes tickled, he had to do everything he could to suppress a yelp. It eventually subsided where it had begun--his heart. At the end of it, he was out of breath.Though by this time Inuyasha had walked out of eyesight, Koga could still see glints of silver sparkle where Inuyasha’s image had previously just glided through.


	3. Chapter 3

She tended to the fish roasting over the fire. Oil seeped out and dripped from off the tails into the shallow pit beneath. At each drop, she heard the sizzle: tortured oil that burned brilliantly blue for a split second to be consumed by the regular orange flames until the small sapphire point vanished. I wish I could sit in front of this fire forever. It didn’t matter how much her shins smarted at its heat. She wished for the trees to forever sway in the breeze, for the fish to remain forever a bit undercooked, and for the small child and cat to play with each other in perpetuity. Before she could finish the thought, I wish, she saw two figures step out from the forest. “Oh,” she said to herself, “it’s interrupted.”

Sango and Inuyasha walked side by side. Inuyasha looked dispirited. Sango seemed concerned too, but when she espied Kagome, she perked up and waved to her. “Did Koga bring more fish with him?” she asked. Inuyasha scowled at the fire pit, but quickly returned to his prior expression.

“I went out into the forest to gather herbs. They’ll pair nicely with the fish,” Sango said, gesturing towards the fire. “The rest we can put into this one here. It’ll be...extra spicy.”

Kagome replied, “You know, Miroku loves spicy food.”

“It must be the deprivation he went through as a monk.”

Kagome and Sango shared a laugh between themselves. Miroku had been in the nearby village getting supplies in return for his exorcisms. Inuyasha settled himself under a tree some way away from the two of them. Sango and Kagome looked at each other. Knowing that they couldn’t openly discuss what Inuyasha was sulking about, not with Inuyasha’s excellent hearing, they returned to cooking.

Shippou came up to them riding Kirara. “I’m starving! Is it ready yet?”

“Almost ready,” Kagome chimed and pat Shippou on the head. He rubbed his stomach and returned to playing. _Still,_ she thought, _I wish I could have sat alone in front of this fire longer—just a little bit longer._

Sango began separating the leaves from the stalks and shaking off any residual dirt. Every now and then, Kagome turned the fish over to cook the other side. At each disturbance, oil dripped off the roasted skin and into the flames. Kagome snuck a look at Inuyasha who had assumed his usual sleeping position, on his side with hand tucked underneath his face. 

To break the silence, Sango turned to Kagome and said, “After dinner, can I take a look at your magazine?” For feudal standards, Sango was quite literate, but she quickly found out from browsing Kagome’s magazines that she would never be able to function in Kagome’s time. As boring as Kagome found some of the articles to be, Sango was enchanted by them, by how Kagome, still a teenage girl, could be so literate as to rival the highest monks. Sango was also intrigued by the shiny gloss of the pictures and the outlandish fashion that people of Kagome’s time adopted. “Do people really look like this?” Sango would say when landing on a page showing a model in French clothes. “It’s nice to know that the girls are as curvy as ever,” Miroku would butt in and then immediately leave with a red handmark stamping his face. 

“Sure thing,” Kagome replied. She turned her attention away from the fish and brought a magazine out of her backpack. “This one’s a nature magazine. You can see places that you’ve never been to. I mean, I’ve never been out of the country either, but at least I’ve seen other prefectures.” 

“That’s right. I’ve never gone this far out of my hometown before, only to neighboring villages to hunt demons. The farthest anyone from my village has gone was my father to serve the daimyo. The stories he brought back...I couldn’t believe the riches the nobility had.”

On hearing this, Kagome thought of the conveniences that her modern life afforded her: a separate bedroom, the privacy of the bathroom, a kitchen always at the ready. As romantic as this fire in front of her was… 

A mauve silhouette holding a staff came into view. “I think I see Miroku off in the distance,” Sango said. She laid aside the basket of fish. “I’ll go help him.”

Shippou had seen him as well. He shouted, “Miroku! Miroku!” He and Kirara gamboled over to him.

Sango rose up and walked over to Miroku who did indeed seemed to be juggling a basket and several parcels. Kagome watched her go off. She simultaneously wished they could have extended the conversation and felt relieved that she could finally retreat back into her mind. Now what was it? She snuck a look at Inuyasha who was off by himself. His eyes were closed in feigned sleep. Despite that, his face had assumed a pensive look. Annoyance welled up in her chest. Why was he always so difficult? I always tell him what I’m feeling, yet he never reciprocates. I guess that I shouldn’t be so harsh considering all the times that Inuyasha helped me, she thought. _But I never asked to be here_.

Kagome slammed her hand over her mouth, afraid that she had given voice to the thought. She looked around to see if anyone had heard. Miroku was greeting Shippou, Inuyasha was sitting under the trees, and Sango was unwrapping the packages Miroku had brought. None of them gave any hints that they had overheard her. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t hear any of them. It was so beautifully silent in this part of the world. She wanted to hang onto it forever. Before, it was the heat of the fire that she wanted to last forever because it proved to her that something _existed_ , something with heat and passion, but now it was the cool night and everyone’s distance from her that she wanted to remain because within them, it proved that she was the only thing, it confirmed her existence to herself.

“Hey there,” a voice called out above there. “Need any help?” Kagome looked upward to see a pair of lapis eyes looking kindly down at her. Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed Koga arriving. Instead of the black armor and fur that usually appareled him, scarlet garments enveloped his frame. His hair was down from its habitual ponytail as well. At least he wouldn’t smell for the rest of the night.

“Oh, the fish are almost done. I don’t think there’s anything else,” Kagome responded. She hoped that none of her irritation came through her voice. She looked up again to see disappointment flash across Koga’s face. A grin instantly snuffed it out. 

“No worries, then. Everything’s good.” Oh, Koga thought, am I really wanted? Have these people ever wanted me around? An idea sprang up in his mind: after everyone retired to bed, he should just slink off into the night and never bother them again. He knew that the canine’s keen ears would hear him leaving and give the mutt great satisfaction. Inuyasha was right: Kagome had never, will never, love him. All he did was impose himself on her. “I’ll just look at one of your magazines.”

He plopped himself down by Kagome and picked another of Kagome’s magazines. He flipped several pages and settled on an advert. Even though Koga couldn’t read, he hoped to better understand Kagome through the pictures in her magazines. Like the salad he overheard her talking about, he hoped to catch more glimpses of her time and thereby gain more opportunities to impress her. He flipped through a few pages.

“No...no...no… No, right?”

Kagome wondered what Koga was muttering about. He turned the book towards her. Koga was reading an interview with a manga artist.

“What are you talking about, Koga?”

“This is no, right?” He pointed his finger at the character の and grinned at Kagome. _So he’s trying to learn how to read, too_. “Yeah, that’s right, Koga. You said it the right way.”

Pleased with himself, Koga resumed reading the article.

Why did I have to be reincarnated? If I hadn’t been the reincarnation of a priestess, I could have happily lived my life in the modern era and never bothered with any of this. She looked over the camp and the village in the valley below. Yes, I wouldn’t have to worry about the jewel shards or Naraku at all. This all takes place in the past anyway. It doesn’t matter. No history book mentions this.

Then again, if I hadn’t landed here, I might have lived a happy life, but it would have been a mediocre one. I would work every day, happily look forward to the weekend my employer allotted me, enjoy a movie every now and then, and married a man with a mid-level position in a company hardly anyone’s heard of. I would never have felt this grass, met these people lost to time, or see history in the flesh. Has the wind ever felt this nice in Tokyo? 

Her gaze shifted over to Koga. He was still perusing her magazine. Did Koga ever perceive my lack of interest in him? I always had the choice to give Koga the definite answer he deserved, but I always hesitated for some reason. It was the forwardness that bothered me, the imposition of not just another body but a _consciousness_ on my own that I could never get over. Koga was confident all the time. His life was too carefree and indeed, in comparison to my own, it was practically immortal: unable to fall sick to the same disease as humans, outlasting their lifespan tenfold, strength and speed always at hand. And he hadn’t the terrible burden of _modernity_ on him, he was too stuck in his feudal ways. How could we ever understand each other? We haven’t even scratched the surface. I would never be able to marry him.

She studied him more. His blue eyes gleamed joyfully at the magazine in his hands. She was glad that he was eager to please her. He had moderated his attitude around her and treated all her friends with respect, save for Inuyasha. He had also learned to bathe himself and even took up reading to impress her, no matter how useless it was to him. Pleasurable as it was though, she could never imagine marrying him.

A future with Inuyasha, on the other hand, looked more plausible. They had gotten to know each other well during their journey to retrieve the jewel shards. She had gotten used to and then began to like him and his brashness. But now, when the triviality of her life and the recognition that marriage with Inuyasha would entail one of them staying in the other’s time permanently—and she could not imagine Inuyasha successfully assimilating to modern Japan—stared her in the face, she wanted to dash this possible future away from her like it were some hideous vermin she had caught trying to crawl up her sleeve. “No,” she said to herself, “I would not like to stay here.”

“Kagome, is everything all right?” Koga looked at her. Genuine concern showed in his eyes. She saw that his hand was ready to stretch out and pat her back for reassurance.

“I’m just still shaken up from that battle earlier.”

Koga immediately relaxed. “Just know that you’re safe now, Kagome.” He laid his hand down on her shoulder. She at first wanted to flinch and shake it off. She imagined it an accusing hand laid on her for the crime of thinking ill of someone who has only been kind to you. She restrained herself. By degrees, she felt not the cold hand of accusation, but the warmth of a friend’s hand.

“Thanks, Koga.” She smiled at him. “Hey, the fish are done.” Kagome lifted the spit from its cradle and placed all the fish in another basket.

Miroku sauntered up to the pair, holding a jug in his hand. “It seems the villagers down there are unacquainted with the restrictions a monk lives under. But if fate is so kind as to give me this token—"

Sango appeared at Mrikou’s side: “Since when have you been afraid to break a precept, lecherous monk?”

“Whatever could you mean?”

“Sango’s right, Miroku,” Shippou said. “For a monk, you sure like to do sinful things.”

Everyone at the fire laughed. _This is something I would like to last forever_ , Kagome thought. After the laughter died down, she saw Inuyasha again. With the sun down, his image had dimmed to a silhouette. “Inuyasha! The fish are ready!” she called.

“Those villagers also gave Miroku some yams and rice,” Sango added.

“I can’t wait to eat! I was about to fall off of Kirara,” Shippou said.

Kagome gestured at the basket: “Dig in!”


	4. Chapter 4

Dinner had tired everyone out but Shippou. He pranced around the fire holding his stomach out as if he were pregnant. “I think I’m gonna give birth,” he groaned. 

“Then you should sit down like any pregnant woman would,” Miroku replied, flicking Shippou’s pointed ear.

“Ow!” What did you have to do that for?” Shippou rubbed his ear. “I was just playing around.”

Kagome warned, “If you keep playing around, you’ll get a stomachache. You don’t see any of us playing around, do you?”

“Yeah, that’s because you’re boooorriiinngg.” Miroku reached to flick Shippou’s ear again, but the small child dodged the monk’s finger and scuttled over to the opposite side of the circle. “You won’t catch me sitting down!” He hopped onto Kirara’s back but suddenly stopped. Kirara looked up to Shippou with a querying look. Shippou slid slowly off Kirara and plopped onto the ground. “Oww! Ow! Ow!” he screamed as he gripped his middle. Everyone broke into laughter. 

“See? What did I tell you?” Kagome said.

Shippou stifled his yelps. He walked to lay down between Inuyasha and Koga, his shoulders hunched over in pain. 

Sango said, “Maybe you should listen to Kagome next time, Shippou. She’s always right, you know.” Kagome looked over to Sango and smiled. Shippou groaned. Inuyasha finished the rest of his roasted fish while Koga picked his teeth with a fish bone.

* * *

She let the chatter continue without her; she only wanted to be in her own thoughts. The fire’s warmth suffused her body. She closed her eyes to shut out anything that might distract her from feeling the fire’s heat. _I want this, I want only this,_ she thought, _nothing but this_. She imagined the fire flaring up to a person’s height. Sango wanted a stronger flame so it could warm not just her feet, but her face as well and even reach to the back of her head, warm her entire self. The inhospitable cold of the night would be banished. 

_____ _

She recalled the nights when she was still an apprentice: she would fall asleep in front of the fireplace back at her home. Perhaps because her body was smaller—or that there was a room to contain and centralize the heat—she felt the fire’s warmth more deeply. When did fires become this feeble? How long must she continue to sleep in the cold and eat foraged berries, not because she wanted to (she had lost her taste for them long ago) but because there was nothing else around to assuage her hunger? When will the search for Naraku end? 

____

She wished the fire was inside her, all around her, that the forest spontaneously burst into flames, that a great conflagration broke out and consumed everything. The fire she imagined began at the bottom of her stomach and wound its way up to just beneath her eyes. In comparison to the cold, Naraku and his demons were termites, she thought. Indeed, the thing she dreaded the most was the cold ground she had to return to every night. Despite the thick blanket she wrapped herself in, she felt cold tendrils from the moist earth curl around her body. They snaked around all her limbs, went underneath her skin, and gripped her heart. Sango would shiver so violently at times that her forehead began to sweat. She thought that it was the end for her. Darkness would win. _Help, _she thought. Then, feeble sunrays reached her, filtered through the treetops. The sun became stronger. “Good morning,” Kagome would sing to no one in particular.__

____

____

__

She despised the night; she hated its rule. Darkness obscured everything. There would be nothing to occupy her imagination, and her thoughts would run wild. Sango dug her fingernails into the dank earth. Its surface gave way; its cold seeped in under her nails and traveled up her arm. A tentacle was wrapping itself around her.

__

____

__

She wanted yellow and orange to blot out everything. She resisted the urge to move her face closer to the fire, not for fear that it would singe her face, but lest the others, especially Kagome, notice and ask her what she was doing. She wanted the fire to consume everything in her field of vision. Instead of futilely hoping for a forest fire to happen, she settled for the wall of orange. She closed her eyes and savored the smoky, burnt orange that gamboled in her vision like a playful dog. 

__

____

__

Something appeared in her vision. Someone shy on the margins of a gathering and slowly inches their way forward, a side actor who excuses themself from the stage once they’ve recited their single line. A spider that does not want to expose its hiding spot and crawls on the periphery of its web. Once it was in the center of her sight, it was too late: amorphous, protean, it swirled around the fire. She couldn’t tell which direction it came from. 

__

____

__

And then a purple essence intruded, not stealthily like the yellow flame, but forcefully, assertively. A bull raging in the field, a horse sprinting across the grassland. It circled the orange essence, chased it around the flame, like a hawk after a rabbit. When it seemed that the purple would overtake the orange, threatening to consume all of it, the orange escaped and pranced around the fire, teasing the purple monster that couldn’t quite catch it. Finally, they blended together and formed russet.

__

____

__

Sango had never seen anything like this before. Her heart pounded almost too fiercely for her to listen to her thoughts. _Are these….are these Inuyasha’s and Koga’s demon essences?! _Sango gasped.__

_____ _

____

_____ _

“What is it?” Kagome was holding Sango’s arm. Her face showed great concern.

_____ _

____

_____ _

Sango’s mind snapped back. The raging fire, the terrible cold, the dancing orange and purple—these thoughts replayed themselves on fast forward through her mind. By now, everyone was looking at her.

_____ _

____

_____ _

“It’s nothing. My stomach was upsetting me.”

_____ _

____

_____ _

“Here, I have some antacids,” Kagome said. She rummaged through her yellow backpack and handed Sango a few white tablets. “These should help.”

_____ _

____

_____ _

Sango thanked her for the pills and swallowed them down with a sip of water. She looked over at Inuyasha and Koga. The orange and purple had dissipated. Only the red of Inuyasha’s robes remained, that and the black purple of the night that stretched endlessly behind them. Inuyasha and Koga avoided looking at each other. Inuyasha’s eyes were pointing downwards while Koga’s stared straight into the fire.

_____ _

____

_____ _

* * *

_____ _

____

_____ _

By now, everyone was tired out by dinner. Each person lay in their own cocoon except for Sango. The fire burned low. Every now and then, Sango tossed a trig into the fire pit: the flames would flare briefly then burn down and consume the stick. Sango did this partly out of boredom, partly out of fear of the ever-encroaching cold. However, unlike other nights, her fear had tempered down. She wasn’t so afraid this night. The desire for a great consuming fire had also abated.

_____ _

____

_____ _

What had happened earlier had frightened Sango, but it had also intrigued her. _I can’t believe I saw that,_ she thought. _Inuyasha and Koga are both males, so why would their demon essences be mixing like that? I’ve heard stories, but I never thought...Now that I think of it…_ Inuyasha and Koga had always seemed too competitive to her, and when one of them hugged Kagome, the other was sure to be looking jealously. Was she missing something?

_____ _

____

_____ _

_The orange and purple...Will I see them tonight??!_ Instead of fearing the prospect, Sango consoled herself. _At least I won’t have to look at the gaping black anymore._ Comforted by this thought, by the possibility of seeing a spectacle more captivating than the northern lights, she snuggled into her blanket and shortly fell asleep. 

________ _ _ _ _

____

________ _ _ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everyone! Sorry about leaving the story hanging for a year. College got in the way along with this entire year (big yikes). I've been reading more and taking care of myself. I hope all of you can do the same. 
> 
> Feedback much appreciated.
> 
> Thank you!!!


End file.
